The meeting was characterised by deep and honest personal contact. Within a few days, even a few hours, we lost our fears and we knew in our hearts that the other would respect our faith, esteem it and even take care of it.
One personal experience: I belong to the white, Christian majority in a European country which often takes a position of superiority when encountering other cultures. At the conference I met - for perhaps the first time in my life - a Hindu woman who included my personal God as one of many possible expressions of her God. I realised how right she was in remembering me, that the God of my belief is limited by the people of this belief. While my God still retains his important place and role in my life, my encounter with her made me more modest when talking about my "all-inclusive" God.
The challenge of my work and the dialogue that I conduct with people around me differ from those of many of the participants in this conference. Most of the other women come from contexts where they have to communicate with 'others' who do not respect their personal and physical integrity. My experience is different: as a teacher, I am confronted with many parents and children who have no contact with any religion and who do not know the most basic stories of the Christian tradition. They only practice some external traditions such as Christmas dinners and church weddings. With them, I feel that I have to try to justify my belief; I need to emphasize that I connect intimately to a religious tradition and that my trust in a personal God is not measured by any scientific proofs.
As a member of the white Christian group - but more particularly as a woman, I am also aware that the male-dominated theology of Christianity does represent my belief as a woman. But, I often feel misunderstood, excluded and not represented. I have thus been searching for other and new ways of worship, sometimes within the world of feminism, sometimes not. What I learned was that several of the participants - Jews and Muslims as well as Christians - were engaged in/ had experienced a similar search. Thus, another aspect of the encounter was sharing experiences of working on and changing traditions. The contexts differed greatly but the courage of other women in their surroundings encouraged me to continue the struggle in my own tradition. Hearing, or better, listening to the stories of women of other faiths and other traditions and understanding their traditions opened my mind more than any theoretical or theological book would have been able to do.
Another impression: though we sat in an ordinary seminar room, something elementary was created every day by teaching and sharing different forms of prayer. I felt both enriched and at the same moment poor because I realized that I lack daily religious rituals in my own life - rituals that can connect me every day with my faith.
These experiences show me that personal encounter has to be a key in interfaith dialogue. Encounter does not mean telling the other in order to convince; it does not mean coming together and feeling superior. Encounter means coming together, knowing that truth can only be articulated as personal truth, which in religious language, is seen as confession or a creed. It is not enough to tolerate the other but to accept the faith of the other while being conscious of the real differences and problems of understanding. It is necessary to find the limits of acceptance in order to avoid a simple 'peace and friendship' encounter. Until we are willing to acknowledge limits, we canīt really take each other seriously.
Finally I would like to underline how important it is to continue the discussion with the participants of the conference. I think that this group worked very well together. We have opened our eyes, we have now a different view on several questions of interfaith dialogue and our role in religious education. We could give ourselves tasks and present the results in a second meeting in order to discuss them and to find new concrete questions to continue.
Christiane Hartmann works as elementary school teacher since 1993. She lives in Cologne, Germany. Among other things she teaches religious education and is the deputy-headmistress.